Posted: April 11, 2013 at 12:51 amMitsubishi Motors Corp. says “rough handling” of lithium-ion batteries during inspection may be to blame for overheating problems that prompted it to suspend production of plug-in versions of its Outlander crossover.But the company says other factors could be to blame and won’t resume output until it finds a definitive answer.

Mitsubishi Motors Corp. says “rough handling” of lithium-ion batteries during inspection may be to blame for overheating problems that prompted it to suspend production of plug-in versions of its Outlander crossover.

But the company says other factors could be to blame and won’t resume output until it finds a definitive answer. It hopes to resolve the problem by the end of April.

Mitsubishi has delivered about 4,300 plug-in Outlanders since the model debuted in January. It halted production late last month after the battery in one vehicle caught fire and the housing of two others melted. The company reports a similar problem with a battery in its i-MiEV electric city cars.

Outlander batteries by an MMC joint venture with Yuasa Corp., the Japanese company that made defective lithium-ion batteries for the Boeing 737 Dreamliner passenger plane.